


Close

by DracoMaleficium



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Behind the Scenes, Blood, Blood Sharing, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 11:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9382307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoMaleficium/pseuds/DracoMaleficium
Summary: I couldn't make myself stop! I just wanted us to be close!





	

**Author's Note:**

> Recently I had an anon asking for some Arkhamverse fic and using the quote from "Arkham Knight" I used in the summary about the blood-sharing as a prompt, and, well, a late-night plot bunny happened.
> 
> I'm not usually much for bloodstuff and I kinda made myself queasy writing the very beginning, so fair warning, this is Joker's POV and it's not pretty. Then again it _is_ me writing this so it has a side-helping of sappy too, because I can't help myself. My Joker tends to be a romantic. 
> 
> In his own way.

Funny thing, blood. The different kinds you get. The different shades of red, from bright, almost pinkish to thick, gooey merlot. Joker has seen them all but it never ceases to amuse him. The brightness when it’s freshly spilled, gushing from an artery kind of like when you stick your finger against a running faucet and the water sprays everywhere. Or when you stick a knife in someone’s squishy gut and wriggle it around, and the stuff comes out dark and sticky, almost grudgingly, dark as it takes its time blooming like a rose into the clothes. Or when you shoot someone in the head and it comes out the other side all _splat_ , hilariously spilly, splattery, rivulets of it crawling down a wall in pretty pretty patterns, like rain against the windowpane only prettier even for all the mess that it makes, because of the color and consistency, or…

He thinks there was a punchline to this. Some kind of knee-slapper he’s been working himself towards that’s fading into obscurity now. He doesn’t remember what it was, or even if he knew. He doesn’t care. He’s distracted by the sight of his own blood disappearing into Batman’s body.

It looks dark as it travels up and down slim transparent tubes. Dark and thick, sluicy, reminding him of borscht he vaguely remembers having once, although when or where is long lost in the swirly, pulsating foggy mass he calls his memory. Reminding him of something else too, in consistency if not color, and he trembles with the effort of keeping the dark, prickly amusement inside. It hurts too much to laugh, and anyway, he doesn’t think it’s _that_ funny. 

No. It’s more like a sense of things being exactly as they should, in just the right place. And of romance. Which is what it all comes down to anyway. 

Batman looks so beautiful like this, Joker thinks. He always looks beautiful, but there is a certain special kind of charm to the way he sits slumped and senseless in the chair with his sleeve rolled up, his veins so fragile and exposed. So delicate. So breakable. The fact that Bats is anything but only makes the picture more wondrous.

It would be so easy to cut those veins open right now. He could do it. He knows he could, and he knows exactly what Batsy's blood would look like pulsing out, and it would be beautiful, the two of them together, bleeding out in each other’s arms, a moment of bliss in the middle of this cursed slice of hell. He can picture it so well, the city mourning them with torrents of rain and Harley finding them like that, oh how she would cry, for Joker and for the last of her delusions finally torn away from her…

But he won’t. As romantic as it would be he doesn’t want Batman to go in his sleep, snuffed out like a candle. Joker’s one true love deserves so much better, an earth-shattering bang rather than a sigh, so the whole world would know what it lost. And besides…

He traces the progress of the blood. The tubes swim, Batman’s gorgeous sleeping face blurs, becomes two becomes three becomes one again, and the lights in the room dim, and Joker has a brief experience of complete and utter weightlessness where the pain suddenly ebbs away…

There’s a voice. A hand on his shoulder, shaking gently. He thinks maybe the voice has been calling out for some time — he can’t be sure. He closes his eyes and leans against Batman’s chest.

“Puddin’?” _Harley_. Of course. For a moment Joker’s forgotten she was still here. “Don’cha think that’s enough? Yer gonna bleed yerself dry!”

“Not… yet,” he rasps with some difficulty. His throat burns. His mouth burns. Everything burns, the boils on his skin popping open and oozing goo, pain bursting in little explosions in different parts of his body by turn. “Not yet. Three more… minutes…” 

He clings to Batman’s body and keeps his eyes closed as he breathes and cherishes the sensation of his blood feeding into it. Into Bats. Together, and one, the way they were always supposed to be.

Harley doesn’t try and pry him away again. He can still smell her perfume in the room — vaguely, a muted note under the overwhelming musk of Batman — can still hear her breathing, can sense her presence. But it’s only a moment or two until it all fades and all he’s left with is the heartbeat under layers of kevlar and skin, and he struggles to breathe over the weightlessness and the pain as his body can’t quite decide just what it’s supposed to feel. 

Soon Batsy will wake up and they’ll go back to their old routine. Soon he’ll seethe and rage and Joker will pretend to be stronger than he actually is to perform for him, to reassure him, to keep Batsy’s bubble of comfort intact. Soon Bats will be running all around the city looking for a cure for both of them, and Joker will be free to wonder if Bats might perhaps have wanted to get a cure for him even if Joker hadn’t pumped him full of his tainted blood. Not that it matters. The cure is just an excuse anyway, and Joker doesn’t really have much of a hope that he’ll get to live much longer. It’d be nice to have more time, but he doesn’t mind. He’s left his mark. He’s carved his name into the city’s history, and into Batman’s heart. And now there's more of him in Batman in the most literal - and literary - way, and he thinks of love, and Bram Stoker, and of corruption and taint and poison, and in the end, it's beautiful the way all the best tragedies are, and that’s all that matters.

Although… it would be nice…

To have more moments like this, he manages to think, distantly, through a growing layer of cotton candy gluing to the walls of his head, muting the buzz there, settling heavily just behind his eyelids. Quiet moments, together, pressed close in all the ways that matter. Their blood mingling. Their hearts in sync. Their fates, for a moment, discarded, or maybe not discarded, maybe coming together once again, even if in a whole different way. 

He struggles to open his eyes through the burn. He presses his cheek against the symbol over Batman’s heart as he stays sat on Batman's lap.

He watches his blood sluice into Batman’s veins until the weightlessness lifts him up into dreams of Batman’s arms coming to close around him and a gruff, quiet voice calling his name.


End file.
